| Summary: | This paper examines the effect of mixing varying quantities of rumen fluid with food waste (FW) to
generate biogas energy at ambient temperature (37oC) in a batch anaerobic digestion process. The
researchers adopted an anaerobic digestion process for the study. Food waste was obtained from
selected fast food establishments at Auchi, Edo State, South-South, Nigeria. The rumen fluid was
obtained from an abattoir located at Auchi, Nigeria. Anaerobic digestion of food waste without rumen
fluid served as control experiment while 4 other digesters contained 20, 40, 60 and 80ml of rumen
fluid for co-digestion experiment. The digesters were labelled FW1-FW5 based on their compositions.
The laboratory experiment lasted for a retention time of 17 days without pH control and mixing.
Cumulative biogas yield was measured daily by water displacement technique. The values were
2220, 2280, 1860, 1600 and 1420ml respectively.
The results obtained showed that addition of rumen fluid did not have any positive impact on biogas
yields in digesters FW3-FW5 when compared with the control. Digester FW2 was only 2.70% higher
than FW1 which was not a significant increase. Generally, there were antagonistic effects in the codigestion
of food waste with rumen fluid as the quantity added increased. This implied that monodigestion
of food waste could produce significant quantity of biogas with impressive production rate.
Co-digestion should be carried out at a lower quantity of rumen fluid to improve biogas yield and the
performance of the process. This article contributed to the body of knowledge by bridging the gap of
limited literature in the domain of food waste management techniques in Auchi and Nigeria in general.
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